PS, my other blogs are still being updated, because they take less mental energy to write!
This blog is going into hiatus until November 2009. The reason for this is that I don't have time to write at the moment. I've incredibly busy in the garden, which takes several hours a day, and I also have an Open University course to work at. Together with minding the house, and taking Pippa for walks, this doesn't leave enough time to make the regular commitment to writing which I am determined on.
So rather than keep making excuses to myself, I am calling a halt on this blog and I will be back here in November.
These are the writing-related blogs which I will return to reading then:
http://emergingwriter.blogspot.com/
http://anniewickingsjourney.blogspot.com/
http://rejecter.blogspot.com
Best wishes,
Emily
Monday, April 13, 2009
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Owning a place
Lucinda Lambton is one of my favourite ... now what to call her? If I say a writer, that excludes her effervescent television presentation, and the photographs in her books which are such a big part of her appeal.
Anyway, in her "A-Z of Britain", I have just read the following which struck me:
"In 1901 at Plas Newydd in Wales, the 5th Marquess of Anglesey had the audacity to convert the Gothic fan-vaulted chapel of 1809 into a private theatre. He called it 'The Gaiety' and, having enriched it with plush drapes, quantities of palm trees and statuary, installed a gilded stage in place of the altar."
At first I found this very funny. Then it reminded me of the closure of the chapel in Brideshead Revisited ("They have taken Him away").
It makes me wonder about several different things. How much does the architectural integrity of a building depend on its presentation and use for its original purpose?
How sacred is a place whose sacredness is lost on its owner?
If something is in private hands, how much say should outsiders have on its treatment?
Anyway, in her "A-Z of Britain", I have just read the following which struck me:
"In 1901 at Plas Newydd in Wales, the 5th Marquess of Anglesey had the audacity to convert the Gothic fan-vaulted chapel of 1809 into a private theatre. He called it 'The Gaiety' and, having enriched it with plush drapes, quantities of palm trees and statuary, installed a gilded stage in place of the altar."
At first I found this very funny. Then it reminded me of the closure of the chapel in Brideshead Revisited ("They have taken Him away").
It makes me wonder about several different things. How much does the architectural integrity of a building depend on its presentation and use for its original purpose?
How sacred is a place whose sacredness is lost on its owner?
If something is in private hands, how much say should outsiders have on its treatment?
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
New blog
Please note that I have started a new blog called Cetera, also on Blogger, which is to contain every entry that isn't either attempting to be literary or about the garden. The first post is some pictures of today, showing a short walk and some odds and ends at home. I hope you like it!
http://whereeverythingelsegoes.blogspot.com/
http://whereeverythingelsegoes.blogspot.com/
Friday, February 6, 2009
Writers are Other People
Writers are Other People. They write; I read: that's how it goes. I'm not saying they're all members of the Garrick or sit about in dressing gowns smoking Gitannes and scaring small children, but... they are Notme.
It's a bit like top French wine: I just can't imagine it being local. It seems inherantly foreign. Not so physically remote perhaps but just as exotic as oriental silk, sultry spices or a palm-fringed beach.
Ideas like this are fun to indulge, but some of the potential implications turn out to be false, and inhibitingly so. It isn't the case that whatever is local must be inferior. As it happens there's a vineyard up the road from us which, for a price, can sell you a remarkably fine bottle of wine. Any small town might harbour a shop, a workshop, or a great factory, in which goods are produced that are the best in the world; distance may lend the goods an alluring unfamiliarity, but to someone, they're local.
"There is a woman within you who already wears Pethek Philippe."
So went the seductive advertising slogan - or at least I found it so, in my more susceptible days (ahem). But there is a writer, who is me. How good she is I don't know (and I doubt she'll ever afford a posh Swiss watch on the proceeds). But I have met her.
It's a bit like top French wine: I just can't imagine it being local. It seems inherantly foreign. Not so physically remote perhaps but just as exotic as oriental silk, sultry spices or a palm-fringed beach.
Ideas like this are fun to indulge, but some of the potential implications turn out to be false, and inhibitingly so. It isn't the case that whatever is local must be inferior. As it happens there's a vineyard up the road from us which, for a price, can sell you a remarkably fine bottle of wine. Any small town might harbour a shop, a workshop, or a great factory, in which goods are produced that are the best in the world; distance may lend the goods an alluring unfamiliarity, but to someone, they're local.
"There is a woman within you who already wears Pethek Philippe."
So went the seductive advertising slogan - or at least I found it so, in my more susceptible days (ahem). But there is a writer, who is me. How good she is I don't know (and I doubt she'll ever afford a posh Swiss watch on the proceeds). But I have met her.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
The garden blogosphere
We stare into our fires and plan our seeds,
and feast in heated rooms against the cold;
our gardens sleep while others' blaze with green:
a Mexican wave of flowering laps the Earth.
Young human generations unfurl now,
but garden time runs true, life's orrery:
ephemera preserved for them in blogs,
while your reflected sunshine joins our fires.
---------
[I apologise for cross-posting this with my other blog.]
and feast in heated rooms against the cold;
our gardens sleep while others' blaze with green:
a Mexican wave of flowering laps the Earth.
Young human generations unfurl now,
but garden time runs true, life's orrery:
ephemera preserved for them in blogs,
while your reflected sunshine joins our fires.
---------
[I apologise for cross-posting this with my other blog.]
Monday, September 15, 2008
More moon gazing
Just now it's nearly dark. The trees look especially black, like wooden scenery put up in front of a real sky. Mother of pearl swirls of cloud and blue yonder drift around above them. Over to my left a neatly bisected moon slides behind dull thick low cloud in another sky.
I can see time in the growing darkness.
I can see time in the growing darkness.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Mr Fitzgerald's Translation
It was a bitterly cold morning with a reluctant, grey light. Hastings, the housemaid, did not knock at the morning-room door because there was no reason for her to expect any member of the family to be inside at six o'clock. She nearly dropped her coal bucket therefore when she suddenly caught sight of the rear half of Mr Fitzgerald, still clad in evening dress. He was on his hands and knees behind the heavy brocade sofa. His front half rapidly appeared and he explained that he had been up all night searching for his latest manuscript. Hastings listened politely to this and then turned as soon as she could to attend to the grate. As she lifted out her papers to light it, Mr Fitzgerald seized upon them with delight.
How they had found their way into the kindling box was never discovered.
The family took breakfast at eight o'clock as usual, in their customary convivial silence, each immersed in their reading matter of choice. The smells of kidneys, smoked kippers and slightly burned porridge mingled with coal dust, and the only sounds were of silver against china and the crackles from the well-established coal fire. Mr Fitzgerald spread his pages out around his end of the table and nearly but not quite avoided getting marmelade on them. Before he had finished ordering them, Hastings knocked to say that his cab had arrived.
He gathered up the manuscript and his leather attache case, and out in the cold hall shrugged his shoulders into his great-coat. Hastings handed him his umbrella and hat, and opened the door.
The driver lent down to open the hansom cab door for him and he swung himself up into the red padded interior. There was an overwhelming smell of pipe tobacco from a previous occupant, and he lowered the window, but the rain immediately blew in so he hoisted it shut again. The cab rolled across the cobbles with the rhythmic swing of the horse's gait, and very shortly Mr Fitzgerald was sleeping soundly. His papers slipped down from his grasp to lodge behind the upholstery of the seat.
After a quarter of an hour the cab drew to a halt and the driver announced their arrival. It was only when he tapped with his whip against the door that his passenger awoke with a start and hurriedly sprang out, handed him a generous fare and eagerly ascended the steps of his publisher's premises. The cab moved off again down the street, and along with it went the manuscript.
The cab's next passenger, an elderly curate, read the first two pages and declared it to the driver to be a heathen abomination. The driver deduced the identity of the manuscript's owner without difficulty and retraced his route in the confident expectation of a tip that would be very handsome indeed, and in this he was not disappointed.
How they had found their way into the kindling box was never discovered.
The family took breakfast at eight o'clock as usual, in their customary convivial silence, each immersed in their reading matter of choice. The smells of kidneys, smoked kippers and slightly burned porridge mingled with coal dust, and the only sounds were of silver against china and the crackles from the well-established coal fire. Mr Fitzgerald spread his pages out around his end of the table and nearly but not quite avoided getting marmelade on them. Before he had finished ordering them, Hastings knocked to say that his cab had arrived.
He gathered up the manuscript and his leather attache case, and out in the cold hall shrugged his shoulders into his great-coat. Hastings handed him his umbrella and hat, and opened the door.
The driver lent down to open the hansom cab door for him and he swung himself up into the red padded interior. There was an overwhelming smell of pipe tobacco from a previous occupant, and he lowered the window, but the rain immediately blew in so he hoisted it shut again. The cab rolled across the cobbles with the rhythmic swing of the horse's gait, and very shortly Mr Fitzgerald was sleeping soundly. His papers slipped down from his grasp to lodge behind the upholstery of the seat.
After a quarter of an hour the cab drew to a halt and the driver announced their arrival. It was only when he tapped with his whip against the door that his passenger awoke with a start and hurriedly sprang out, handed him a generous fare and eagerly ascended the steps of his publisher's premises. The cab moved off again down the street, and along with it went the manuscript.
The cab's next passenger, an elderly curate, read the first two pages and declared it to the driver to be a heathen abomination. The driver deduced the identity of the manuscript's owner without difficulty and retraced his route in the confident expectation of a tip that would be very handsome indeed, and in this he was not disappointed.
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